


Let It Burn

by glorious_spoon



Series: A Story Never Told [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mostly hurt, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 09:08:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19059559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Magnus can feel the spell winding tight even from inside the cell, the heavy building tension like a storm surge, thickening the air until he can barely breathe. He’s entirely too familiar with the feeling of magic that’s been paid for in pain.





	Let It Burn

**Author's Note:**

> Some people seemed interested in a follow-up to 'Set the World on Fire', so here it is: Magnus POV, concurrent and immediately afterward. There's not all that much comfort here, but I hope to post another follow-up with a bit more caretaking and comfort afterward.
> 
> This fic will probably not make much sense without reading the first one. If you want to skip what is basically a fairly upsetting rape scene from the POV of one of the unwilling participants, the essential backstory is that Jace and Alec have been caught up in a fuck-or-die situation with Clary and Magnus held hostage. They comply, but are both pretty traumatized about the whole thing. Basically, this is not the sexy version of the fuck-or-die scenario.
> 
> (And I shouldn't have to say this, but given the response on the first one I probably do: if you have a problem with the subject matter, this is your cue to back-button out now.)

Magnus can feel the spell winding tight even from inside the cell, the heavy building tension like a storm surge, thickening the air until he can barely breathe. He’s entirely too familiar with the feeling of magic that’s been paid for in pain. And she has Alec and Jace. _Parabatai_. There are _so many_ ways she could hurt them, and the agony would be multiplied through their bond—

“Magnus?” Clary says carefully, and it’s only then that he realizes that magic is crackling over his skin, his Mark laid bare. For all the good it does them. He’s been testing their bonds since they were thrown in the cell, to no avail. There are no doors; the shell of magic around them is smooth and completely impenetrable. If he wasn’t the one caught in it, he’d admire the quality of the trap.

He is the one caught in it, though. And he can certainly get himself loose, given enough time, but that’s time they don’t have. Magnus doesn’t want to recall all of the things he learned under Asmodeus’s tutelage, but his mind is made unruly with fear, and he remembers them all too well.

“Magnus?” Clary says again. “Is something wrong?”

He swallows against the leaden feeling in his throat, pulls on a smile. He can tell it’s not working; Clary isn’t a child anymore, to believe his pretty lies, but it’s all he has. “It’s nothing, Biscuit.”

Clary peers at him, and he can actually see the moment when she decides to believe him. “Okay.”

“Now please, if you would.” He closes his eyes, breathes through the miasma of magic and pain. “I need to concentrate.”

He already knows it’s futile, but he spreads his magic against the inside of their cage again, searching for cracks, any tiny fissure that he can use to pry it apart from within. He’s so focused that it takes him a moment to feel the snap, the sudden chill as the churning maelstrom of dark magic vanishes all at once. He sucks a breath across his teeth, and it feels like the first time he’s breathed in hours. For an instant it’s a relief, followed by cold horror.

_No, please no—_

“What is it?” Clary says, and she’s close, slender fingers on his arm, so very _young_ , all full of light and life and fear. “Magnus, what is it?”

They’re not dead. Alec is not dead. There are a lot of things that could break the spell like that. He knows that, but his breath and his heart and his trembling hands don’t. He knows that, but his magic is burning across his skin and against the walls of their cage. Clary is staring at him with huge, worried eyes, and—

_Jace, she loves Jace and he was there too—_

Their cage shatters suddenly into nothing, and he stumbles as his magic flares out, then settles back into his skin.

There’s a door in the cell that wasn’t there a moment ago. A dark hallway. Footsteps approaching, one tall familiar silhouette emerging out of the darkness followed by another, dark hair and blond and both of them steady on their feet, and the first thing Magnus feels is an overwhelming rush of relief. Alec is alive. He’s _alive_ , and he looks uninjured, unbruised, unbroken, and Magnus sucks a gasping, shuddering breath across his teeth, and then another, stuttering, uneven, like his body is remembering how to breathe.

Alec pauses in the doorway, dark eyes flickering over them and then away. Jace is three steps behind him, face so pale it’s almost gray.

“You guys okay?” Alec says.

“We’re fine,” Magnus says, breathless. Swaying on tenterhooks already, hands hungry to yank Alec back into his arms. “Are you?”

Alec nods, a sharp tight little motion, and something cold shivers up Magnus’s spine. Because the answer to that is clearly _no_. “Yeah. We should go.”

Clary has come up beside him, a quick sudden motion like she was about to throw herself into Jace’s arms, but she pauses. Her fingers press against Magnus’s elbow, and then she says, “What happened?”

“Nothing, it’s—nothing,” Jace says, “don’t worry about it, let’s get out of here.”

Alec, the tense lines of his shoulders and jaw. The way he hasn’t walked into Magnus’s embrace. And Jace has his arms folded so tightly he’s almost hugging himself, and the distance between them is… there’s more of it than there should be. Alec and Jace are parabatai. They’re brothers. They’re pretty bad at talking, but they’re always tactile with each other, especially after something like this. Shoulder bumps and hair ruffles, little grounding touches to reassure themselves and each other that they’re both still there, still okay.

They’re not touching now. They’re not touching, they’re not looking at each other, and when Clary slips past him to wrap Jace into a hug he freezes, rigid and unnaturally still for a long moment before he relaxes in a very deliberate kind of way and returns the embrace. 

“She let you go?” Magnus asks, keeping his voice carefully neutral. 

Alec’s eyes flick up toward him, then away. He jerks his chin down. “She was done with us. But we should get out of here before she changes her mind.”

That’s true enough, anyway. Magus moves carefully closer, reaches for Alec’s hand. He half-expects Alec to jerk away from him, but he doesn’t. He laces his fingers together with Magnus’s and _clings_ , squeezing tight enough to hurt. His face still set and blank, hair messy and curling damply at his temples. He smells like sweat, this close. A heady musk that Magnus recognizes entirely too well, and underneath that a cloying sweetness like rotting flowers. 

_Oh._

Magnus yanks his magic back beneath his skin before it can flare out and burn the world. His eyes are aching, and he blinks to keep his Mark concealed for the moment, curls the fingers of his free hand around Alec’s arm, bracing, feels Alec shudder beneath his touch and then still.

 _I’ll kill her,_ he thinks, and it feels like a stone settling into a part of him that he usually doesn’t acknowledge, that cold well of demonic power that underlies every pretty useful spell of his. The thought tastes like acid dissolving on his tongue, sharp and burning. _I’ll fucking kill her._

Useless. All of his power wasn’t enough to prevent this; who is he to think of revenge at a moment like this?

Out loud, he says, “Okay. Then let’s get out of here.”

*

The maze their witch had them trapped in lets out in an empty construction zone, dim empty hallways and sour-smelling carpet giving way very suddenly to a broad open space that smells like fresh concrete and stale water. Stone crunches beneath Magnus’s boots, and Alec tugs away from his hand, a quick anxious kind of movement, and says, “Could you give us a second?”

Magnus swallows against the bitter coldness in the back of his throat, that terrible ache, and smiles as gently as he can. “Of course, darling.”

“Thank you, Magnus.” Alec’s voice is soft and rough and his fingers fall lightly on the outside of Magnus’s arm, a brief warm pressure, and it’s more comforting than it should be given that Alec’s calm expression looks like a fragile mask already fissured with cracks. “Thanks. It’ll just be a second.”

Several paces back, Jace is detaching himself with Clary with, Magnus assumes, similar assurances. He looks at Alec and Alec looks at him and neither of them speak. Alec jerks his chin sharply and they both move to the edge of the poured concrete, to where tattered orange ribbons delineate the end of the safe zone. Beyond them is a crumbling foundation and a deep trench heavy with swampish water, a deadly fall. Magnus is long past the point of fearing for Alec’s life whenever a rooftop edge seems too close, but in this moment, he wonders.

Clary moves up beside him, soft and careful. “What happened to them?”

“I don’t know,” Magnus lies. He sees her sidelong glance and ignores it. 

Twenty yards away, Alec and Jace are talking too quietly for them to hear. It’s a tense conversation conducted at arm’s length, at least until Jace unfolds his arms, hesitates, and then reaches for Alec as if to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. There’s nothing unusual about that, other than the way Alec reacts: a sudden flinch, jerking away like he’s been electrocuted, hands flaring out, becoming fists. Jace drops his hand and takes a step back. Even from here, Magnus can see the way his expression crumples, and Alec’s face is like a mask, entirely blank. His body bowstring tight.

It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion, bloodless but devastating.

“Something happened,” Clary says. She’s frowning when Magnus glances at her, but it’s a curious, thoughtful, worried kind of expression, nothing more. She’s not going to figure it out. Clary is a clever, ruthless child, but she lacks the kind of cruelty it would take to devise a thing like this, or to anticipate it. She’s thinking tactically, that’s all. “That was too easy, getting out like that. That she just let them go, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Magnus says softly. “I know.”

He can feel the weight of Clary’s gaze, but he says nothing more. Between Clary and Jace, this is Jace’s business to tell. Magnus has Alec to worry about, Alec who is moving back toward them, back ramrod-straight, hands in loose fists at his sides, Jace trailing miserably in his wake. They break apart unspeaking as they approach, and Alec steps deliberately into Magnus’s space, takes his hand with the same deliberation, and says, “Can we please go home?”

There are reports that need to be filed and leads that need to be run down and Magnus could not, at that moment, give one single, solitary fuck about any of it. “Of course,” he says, and his hands want Alec’s skin, his body wants Alec--he always wants Alec, and even in this moment the urge to draw him in close, to feel him steady, safe, _alive_ is almost too strong to resist. Almost. He doesn’t know how Alec will react right now if he tries to hug him, and he’s not sure he wants to find out. “Of course we can.”


End file.
